


All of it

by proprioception (sacrificethemtothesquid)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 00:01:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15279114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/proprioception
Summary: The thing about magic is that it's not about healing, it's about not dying.





	All of it

* * *

_Do I contradict myself?_  
_Very well then I contradict myself;_ _  
_ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman

 

The thing about magic is that it's not about healing, it's about not dying.

“S’really cool, the way you turn into animals and stuff,” Vax mumbles, and then: “...I've lost a lot of blood.” He can’t tell if it’s an explanation or an excuse.

Keyleth stares at him for a full thirty seconds and then grabs him by the wrists with startling ferocity. Before he can make a sound, her bright tendrils sink into his bones and it's too late to say no.

If his realm hadn't chosen magic over science, he'd know that blood cells are being forcibly pulled from his marrow and dumped into his veins. It isn't healing; it's just rearranging all the parts that are left. He's barely upright, but there are monsters to fight and Briarwoods to murder, so he has to just grit his teeth and accept it.

_You know I’m in love with you, right?_

She's stammering and flustered, a streak of blood on her cheekbone. He opens his mouth to tell her again, just in case she hadn't really heard the first time, because she’s still looking at him like he’s sprouted another head, but then Percy’s acrid breath hits him hard in the face and a loose bundle of arrows hits him hard in the chest.

Tendrils of black smoke leak from Percy’s nostrils and eyes, curling up like loose tears. No one knows what he is or what he carries - not anymore, not now that he’s like this - but it tastes like blood and vengeance when it hits Vax’s lungs. Fear comes out as sharp, angry words like bullets, and Vax stands there and takes it because yeah, he knows.  

There are six names etched into Percy’s gun, one of them its carrier. Magic just rearranges the parts that are left.

Keyleth’s gone still and shuttered. She boils and flows like the air she commands, and right now, she’s as empty as a windless day.

_You know I'm in love with you, right?_

She didn't know. She couldn't. She can pull rain from a cloudless sky and harness the very stone beneath her feet, but she doesn't see  _people_. The sun can't see the shadow it casts. 

He wants to take it back, to do it all over, but blood can't be unspilled. The wound can only be twisted shut and left in an unnatural limbo until the body is allowed to heal on its own.

The funny thing about magic is that once you're not dying, you just keep moving. There's never time to heal. That’s for tomorrow, and there’s always another tomorrow. Unseen scars form from invisible sutures, but there’s never any time for the actual flesh.

They start down the hallway toward Lady Briarwood and the nightmares she’s about to unleash. Vax isn't dying, but he kind of wishes he were.

 

****

 

When it’s over, Keyleth’s standing by the tree when he comes up. “If you’ll have me, I’m yours,” Vax says, but she jumps at his touch. Her eyes dart with the sharp movement of frightened deer, and gods, he's doing this wrong.

He can’t help himself. This is a decision he didn’t make and he's helpless in the face of it.

 

****

 

He can’t purge thief from his soul, but Vax tries to be as honest as he can. “I can’t lead you on,” he says to Gilmore, and watches the arcanist’s face crumple with the blow. He knows that pain. He’s choosing cold over warmth, the uncertain over the sure.

 _If you’ll have me, I’m yours_.

Gilmore would have him in a moment, gloriously and without hesitation. It would be sumptuous, the finest wine in the fullest cup at the most lavish banquet. It would be velvet and gold, languid comfort and playful happiness that if it weren't for Keyleth, maybe he'd already enjoy.

That’s a lie. He's never had the courage to reach out and take what he's been offered. Vax didn't know how to move until Keyleth reached out and pulled him to his feet. He'd have danced around Gilmore until the end of time and Gilmore would have let him stay just out of reach.

Gilmore is a man who knows when to pursue a deal and when to wait for the deal to come to him. He's been patient with Vax, holding open a door that he knows Vax won't let himself walk through.

It isn’t fair. He adores Gilmore. Even just an hour in his presence leaves Vax feeling bold. He feels...wanted. Pursued. Alive, filled with the sharp exhilaration of being matched against a confident and respectful opponent. He’s the dark umbra to Gilmore’s glowing flame, and maybe in another life-

Being in love with Keyleth is like looking straight into the sun. It isn’t comfortable. It isn’t soft. It’s not where he’s supposed to be. He lives in the shadows. He bets against his friends and against himself. He’s good at unseen attacks because he’s constantly attacking himself. This revelation, these conversations: these come from a new Vax, one he doesn’t recognize. This is him shouting from the rooftops instead of scrawling chalky thieves’ cant in the gutter. Gilmore would have him as he is, but that isn’t who Vax wants to be.

So, he kisses Gilmore straight on the mouth. It’s something he’s wanted to do for months, something he hadn’t dared, but now that he’s given it up he can’t make himself stop.

“Now you’re just teasing,” Gilmore says, his tone fond.

Vax has no idea what he’s doing.

 

****

 

He’s expecting Vex to corner him and she doesn’t disappoint. “You seem a bit off,” she announces, hands on her hips. “What’s going on?”

What’s going on is that he’s lovesick and there’s no magic in the world that can somehow make him feel better. “I will tell you just about everything,” he says to his sister, his twin, the other half of his heartbeat, “but I don’t think I want to talk about that.”

She blinks and then gods, she actually looks _worried_.

 

****

 

Emon is in ruins far behind them. Whitestone is barely safe and the world feels like it's crumbling at the edges. 

Pike stays with Gilmore, stanching blood and mopping up the dregs of fever with Sarenrae’s light.

(Gilmore isn’t dying.)

The arcanist is asleep when Vax finally gets home, heartsick and shattered. The burn on his back screams with every little movement, and he’d take off his shirt but he can’t stand the way the others look at him. There’s a sharp little cut on the roof of his mouth where he’d broken the arrow they’d given him to bite, and he’s so exhausted he aches.

He’s ragged. He has nothing left. What he should do is go to his own bedroom and fall into his own bed to sleep amid his own pillows, but he’s lost all resistance. Vax wants to curl up by Gilmore and watch the slow movement of his breath, to watch him not die as the gentle glow of Pike’s magic keeps him inside himself, but…

This isn’t what he’d promised himself. It wouldn’t be honest. It’s not fair to Gilmore, not when Vax has made sure the boundary was edged as clearly as he could. He can’t cross that line just because he needs to.

Instead, he keeps walking down the hall. He means to go to his sister’s room, but he ends up at Keyleth’s instead.

When she opens the door, her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. “I don’t want to be alone tonight,” he manages.

“I don’t want to be alone most nights,” she says quietly, and gently tugs him inside.

 

****

 

They leave Gilmore in Whitestone. They have no choice. Vax is almost grateful. If it were up to him, he’s not sure he’d be able to make the rational decision right now.

It’s a lull in the storm. They’re all sitting in the tavern in Vasselheim, trying to forget that the world rests on their shoulders. Vax thinks maybe he should be concerned about how often they’ve started day-drinking, but the larger part of him - the drunker part of him - readily points out that with the battles they’ve been fighting, drinking happens when the drinking happens. Day and night have lost all meaning.

Keyleth is somewhere into her third cup; he can tell by the bloom of pink in her cheeks and the exuberance of her laughter. She’s leaning into Kashaw, and it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

“I know that look,” Percy says, as if he could possibly know. “Stop. Now.” 

Vax ends up fumbling his way into a broom closet to burrow amid the musty reek of old mops and stale beer. He lets his head fall back against the wall, and bites down on his fist to stifle a scream.

There’s Gilmore and Keyleth and the Chroma Conclave and a hard ache in his bones like an empty belly. He’s in love, but he doesn’t know _how_. More than that, the world is falling apart, and he doesn't know if he  _should_. 

Later, he’ll pretend he was too drunk to know where he was going and then he’ll pretend he’s too drunk to bust himself out. It’s a good laugh, and if there are still any tears on his face, no one seems to notice.  

Shadows and deception. You can drag a man into the light but it doesn't mean he won't burn.

 

****

 

Later, they’ll tell him what he said and it will sound impossibly brave:  _take me instead, you raven bitch._

All he knew in the moment - all he still knows - is that she’s the other half of his heartbeat, and he can’t lose her, he  _can’t_ , and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her by his side. He’s half a person without her. He’s _nothing_ without her.

Magic isn’t about healing. It’s about not dying. It’s about taking what exists and rearranging it. Someone had to leave their life there on the temple floor, and even if was Vex’ahlia who died, Vax’ildan is the one who will pay the Raven Queen’s price.

“How do you feel?” Keyleth asks that night, her voice twisted and strained.

The words feel like ash in his mouth. “I don’t know.”

He’s marked for death. There are shadows under his skin. He’s waiting, his heart quivering with ever-renewing panic. Will he fall to the ground, an empty shell of blood and bones, or will he just blow away like dust? He’s afraid - gods, he’s so fucking terrified - but he doesn’t regret what he’s done. He doesn’t regret it for a single moment. This feels like the fear in open combat, in squaring off with an opponent face-to-face. He knows he can handle it, but he doesn’t know how it’s going to go. If this were a true battle, he could define the edges. He’d know when it started, and when it was over he could go back to feeling safe.

There are no edges now. Possibility roils around him like Percy’s dark cloud.

He wants Vex. He wants hide from the world like they did when they were kids. His instinct is to go to ground with her, to find some secret, empty hole and curl up like newborn mice, but this time is different. This time, he can’t. He can’t tell her what he’s done. The words won’t leave his throat, and even if they could, he doesn’t want to see the dawning horror on her face when she realizes what he’s done. She’ll find out soon enough, and he’s drowning in nauseous dread.

So, here he is, perched on the edge of Keyleth’s bed with Keyleth’s blanket around his shoulders because no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get warm. She says a lot of things; all he understands is that she doesn’t get it. She’s afraid to love him because he’s going to die.

It’s a hard thing to swallow. He needs someone to convince him it’s going to be okay, and instead she’s taken the truth of the world and stabbed him with it.

She spins magic through her fingers as easily as he’d twiddle a lockpick. The world blooms for her. It opens itself to her, roots and water and sky. The worst future she has is to ascend to something like godhood, to hold command over every natural element and hold it forever.

Vax doesn’t get more than misunderstood guilt and musty feathers. He just has to rearrange what he has and keep moving.  

 

****

 

Death isn’t an escape. In the end, the Raven Queen owns him. He should feel shackled. He should feel angry, but he doesn’t.

“This is who you’ve always been,” Vex tells him gently. “Darling, you’ve kept to the shadows your whole life. How is this any different?”

It isn’t. It isn’t, and maybe that’s the hardest part. He picks at the threads holding Sarenrae’s ruined symbol on his glove. He’d seen Pike glowing and transcendent, and he’d ached to have something like that for himself. He’d sewn this ragged patch himself, hoping he could will himself into that light.

He’s never been seen and the times he has, he’s wanted to hide. Chicken and egg, egg and chicken - at this point, it doesn’t matter. He’d wanted to feel a part of Sarenrae, but he has no inclination for magic. He’s never felt a single passing shudder of warmth until the Raven Queen slid into his ribcage, and then he’d known it by its sudden absence.

Someday, he's going to be called back. He's going to die, and his family will knit around his absence like a wound.

 

****

 

When he can’t keep himself away, he goes and finds Gilmore.

“Vax’ildan!” The arcanist gingerly sits up with a wince. “Your sister asked if you’d been by. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

“You’re an impossible man to forget,” Vax says, the words pushing themselves out on their own.

There’s a long moment of awkward silence. He feels naked in Gilmore’s presence and swallows back the urge to run. “I’m sorry, I...got lost on my way here and I-”

“If you were really lost,” Gilmore says slowly, “you wouldn’t be standing here screaming to be found.”

He doesn’t want to be found. He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s being crushed under a weight he can’t bear, and he needs someone to help him, anyone, but there isn’t anyone-

“Vex, she-” He chokes back the terror in his throat, rubbing his arms against the heavy memory of her gone cold and limp. “I made a transaction,” he blurts out.

Gilmore looks at him soberly.

“I made a transaction,” Vax repeats. “An offer, a deal, and I- I think it was accepted. I think it’s done, and I don’t know when or how I’m going to pay.”

“A poor deal,” Gilmore observes. “Should have had me do the negotiation, my friend.”

“You couldn’t have- there wasn’t _time_ , Gilmore. She was dead, she was- she was just lying there, and I…” He’s distantly horrified to feel his eyes go hot and wet.

“Come here,” Gilmore says, his voice offering a soft comfort that leaves Vax flat-footed and mute, and so he goes.

Grief mingles with crushing loneliness, and before he can stop himself, Vax kisses him. It’s not something he came here expecting to do, but he needs something solid and warm and alive, and Gilmore is all of these.

It’s easier than he’s thought it would be. Gilmore is coming back to life and Vax is walking away from it, and somehow meeting in the middle is what makes sense. He wants to say he doesn’t mean to and he wants to say he doesn’t want it, but neither of those things are true, and there are too many layers of consent that are carefully considered and then just as carefully set aside.

Somewhere in the middle, when he’s buried himself in Gilmore’s musky heat, the arcanist’s fingers twine through Vax’s hair, and gently lift his head. “This isn't something you need to give,” the arcanist says quietly.

He wants to, he _does-_

“Vax’ildan. Please stop. Let me.”

He does.

It feels like being taken apart. It feels like stretching a cramped muscle that doesn’t know how to unclench, a creature squinting at sunlit warmth after months curled tight in its winter burrow. Vax can’t breathe, but Gilmore's there breathing for him, the air in Gilmore’s lungs becoming the air in his own, the noise between them like comforting a child.

It’s too open. It’s too  _seen_. It’s too much skin and too much attention, but he’d be lying if he said he wanted to stop. He has a penchant for the intense sort of beauty that overwhelms him to the point of pain - the perfect slide of a dagger between unsuspecting ribs, the glinting white of Gilmore's smile, the way the light hits Keyleth’s hair in late afternoon - and this is all of it.

When it’s over, he curls up in the hollow of Gilmore’s neck. “I should have loved you.”

“The heart wants what it wants, my friend. Horses to water and all that,” the arcanist says fondly, and pats the side of Vax’s head. ”Don’t ruin the moment.”

He falls asleep with his head tucked into the hollow of Gilmore’s shoulder. He dreams of falling into black feathers, of having them clog his mouth and nose as he plummets. He wakes up with a gasp, his body drenched in sweat.

“Should have known you’d make a poor bedmate,” Gilmore says, but there’s no rancor, only fond sadness.

 

****

 

Two days later, a rakshasa with Gilmore’s face gives Vax a robe and then stabs him in the stomach. The rakshasa will die and Gilmore will be found very much alive and starving for vengeance, but there’s too much blood and too much confusion. There’s poison in Vax’s body and a curse slipped in like a letter into a book, the extra paper undetected. It’s not until he’s puking his guts out in the hallway that he thinks something might actually be wrong, and then Pike - always Pike, always Sarenrae, always the golden warmth that he will never get to carry - pulls it from his chest.

He’s so used to everything hurting, he just assumed he was fine.

Magic takes the things that he loves and rearranges them. Pike extracted a curse but Hotis planted doubt, and no matter how hard he tries, Vax can’t look at Gilmore the same way.

The worst part is that he thinks Gilmore understands.

 

****

 

Dragons are slain. Emon is liberated.

The next time Vax sees him, Gilmore’s Glorious Goods has a crisp new awning and a glowing proprietor.

“Vax’ildan!” The arcanist holds open his arms. “Come, let me look at you!”

It’s like being drawn into a familiar current. He doesn’t resist, and when he’s enveloped in purple robes, incense tumbles over his shoulders like heavy velvet.

Gods, he loves Gilmore. The world is richer for his existence. Gilmore is grandeur and indulgence, a reminder that life is meant to be enjoyed. Gilmore is a consummate aesthete, a sumptuous feast, a master of his art and fierce defender of his city.

Later, Vax will die somewhere in the middle of the ocean and be laid out somewhere on an idyllic beach. Vex’ahlia looks straight into the face of his goddess and demands his return, but Keyleth… Keyleth puts a hand to the place she’d marked him so many months ago, and with a flash as bright as the sun, jolts him back into himself.

“Besides,” she whispers, her hair falling around his head like a curtain. “You know I’m in love with you, right?”

Keyleth takes the blood from his marrow and pulls it into service. She looks at him with a steady gaze and does the same with his heart.

The thing about magic is that it's not about healing, it's about not dying. Healing comes with time, and Vax wants all the time he can have. 


End file.
